The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was originally established in order to encourage international co-operation to cope with recession and protectionism on a world scale and to discourage individual countries from pursuing policies that would beggar their neighbors and eventually themselves. The desire to improve on the international chaos of the 1930s led to the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, and an attempt to devise a financial system which would provide a more permanent and acceptable framework for international transactions. It was intended that the emerging Bretton Woods system would generate benefits for international trade in the form of stable (though not necessarily fixed) exchange rates, while at the same time, avoiding the deflationary rigidities of the gold standard mechanism. The system was designed to ensure a world of full employment and economic growth. This paper will examine a few of the negative and positive aspects the IMF has had since its inception, and how it has evolved over time to answer the question, is the IMF a sinner or saint?
If the general purpose of the IMF at its inception was to oversee the operation of the infant Bretton Woods system, its more specific purposes were spelled out in Article 1 of its Articles of Agreement as follows: | (i) To promote international monetary cooperation through a permanent institution which provides the machinery for consultation and collaboration on international monetary problems. |

| (ii) To facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international trade, and to contribute thereby to the promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive | | resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy. |

| (iii) To promote exchange stability, to maintain orderly exchange arrangements among members, and to